Monday morning brought more heavily overcast skies, with occasional sprinkles. I got up early to beat the rush hour, arriving at my coffee shop in St. Paul well before dawn. After dawn I headed for Crosby Farm Park, since I was uncertain about the weather. It was quite warm for November, and the sprinkles never turned into rain. Unfortunately it was still a quiet morning at Crosby Farm. The most interesting observation was the first song sparrow of my trip, hanging out with the American tree sparrows. I really miss the diversity of sparrow species in this area in other seasons, because they're fun to stalk and ID. After a loop around the small pond I was ready to move on.

I wasn't really certain where to go with only had half a day to use, so I headed back to the Old Cedar Avenue section of Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. I did the same section of the bluff trail as yesterday, and basically saw all the same birds. The barred owl had moved, and took a bit of searching to locate. I tried keeping an ear out for those sneaky little brown creepers, and their buzzy little trill. I finally saw a house finch during a count - I thought I'd see more of them.

The quiet trails on Monday were a welcome change from the throngs on the trails over the weekend. I had forgotten how difficult it is to get away from people so close to the city. My concentration on the bird counts was constantly broken by greetings, questions, dogs, bikes, screaming kids, horns, etc. In Hawai'i I'm almost always alone in the wilderness.

Bird Counts:

Crosby Farm
1km, 0820-0950
20 BCCH, 15 CANG, 9 MALL, 2 RBWO, 7 WBNU, 4 AMGO, 2 AMCR, 2 SOSP, 1 ATSP, 3 DOWO, 2 HAWO, 2 NOCA, 1 UNLG


Cedar Ave:
1.5km, 1015-1200
20 AMRO, 28 BCCH, 4 DOWO, 5 WBNU, 36 ATSP, 3 AMGO, 46 MALL, 4 RBWO, 4 BUFF, 4 NOCA, 1 HOFI, 1 WTSP, 2 BRCR, 12 CANG, 4 AMCO, 6 WODO, 3 HAWO, 2 NOPI, 1 BADO, 1 DEJU, 1 UNLG